Christine Stoddard

In art school, conversations about the merits of polyamory thrived, but hearing anyone express a genuine desire to get married almost never happened. It was almost taboo. The implication was, how could you want something so traditional? So suburban and unimaginative?

Looking back at childhood photos now is bittersweet. In the moment the camera caught, I'm always smiling, but I wasn't always a happy child. I was fat-shamed almost daily.

My now-husband was stunned the first time I told him what I do while walking alone. I mentioned behavior typical of so many city-dwelling women: carrying pepper spray, checking my back every block, trying to look confident while struggling to properly breathe. After a moment of silence, he teared up and said, “I don’t want you to have to worry.”

Some people think that the size and budget of your wedding reflect how much love you and your partner have for each other: The bigger the wedding, the bigger the love. On the other hand, my father likes to joke, “The bigger the wedding, the bigger the divorce.”

I was shivering and sweating. What if the procedure didn't work? What if I had serious complications? What if I had to come back?

Plenty of Americans have names that don't convey their full cultural background because, at this point, so many of us are mixed up. How could our names possibly communicate all that we are? But when the time comes for an interracial, interethnic, international couple to name their child, they're often faced with a political decision.

Though I was raised in an interdenominational household, my upbringing could at best be described as vaguely Christian.

The moon sauntered out from a curtain of clouds, whispering, “All things must end.”

[CN: mention of intimate partner violence] Patsy Cline sang with such a beautiful range of emotion because she had experienced so many ups and downs in her own life.

Immigrants are pushed out of their home countries due to social, political, or economic forces beyond their control — poverty, genocide, wartime.... I doubt many Salvadorans of my mother's generation fled El Salvador to go “find themselves.”